Background
Exeter City Council sent out a mailer to more than 6,000 households across Exeter. The purpose of the mailer was to advise them that many homes in the Exeter area had been identified as ‘losing heat’ (through the use of a thermal imaging camera) possibly through inadequate levels of insulation.
A web-site link was provided to allow householders to see if their own home was identified as ‘losing heat’. A free-phone number was also provided for the Energy Saving Trust – for householders to call if they were interested in a ‘free survey and no obligation’ quote to assess the need for (further) cavity wall and loft insulation.
Challenge
The challenge, within a demanding time-frame, was to develop and implement a methodology which would allow Exeter City Council to both measure levels of recall (and readership) of the mailer – and gauge levels of interest in the ‘free survey and no obligation quote’ and (further) cavity wall and loft insulation.
Solution
A door-stepping methodology was recommended which would allow us to ‘directly’ target those households which had been sent the mailer – through the use of the actual addresses and postcodes.
An interview team of 10 was used – each interviewer using carefully constructed daily route planners covering more than 100 property addresses.
Despite some considerable geographical dispersion of the property addresses on the majority of the daily route planners – the interviewers were given a challenging daily ‘quota’ to achieve of 20 completed interviews (a 1 in 5 response rate – an ‘Industry’ standard).
To add further value for Exeter City Council – our interview team not only distributed further ‘informational’ leaflets to each house-holder taking part in the survey, but also distributed leaflets to the remaining addresses (from each list of 100) at which they received either refusals to take part or householders were not at home.
Outcome
Despite the tight time-scales and a challenging quota – our interviewers achieved in excess of a 1 in 5 response rate and a total of 1,227 completed interviews were achieved.
Awareness of the mailer was high – and further supported by the hand-delivery of additional information – many expressed a positive interest in seeking a ‘free survey and no obligation quote’ – notably those aged over 65 and those whose household incomes were below £18,000 pa – where cavity wall and loft insulation can be provided free of charge.
